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Guilty Pleasure? I Don’t Think So

I recently received a book to review that was written by an academic and in her introduction she says that reading mysteries is her guilty pleasure.

I threw the book down the stairs.

I don’t believe there are guilty pleasures when it come to reading or listening or watching. In fact, as long as you are not harming anyone else or a living creature you have no reason for guilt. Wanna dress up as a giant squirrel when you are having grown up fun time? Go for it. If you take an actually squirrel and paint it blue as part of that fun, THAT you should feel guilty about.

My tastes in entertainment is all over the place. In books I love to read all sorts of things. Biographies, comic books of all kinds. I read mysteries of course but also in all the sub genres as well, cozy, supernatural, PI, etc etc. I like all kinds of music and enjoy all kinds of television and movies.Why would or should there be any guilt? Not all entertainment needs to change your life or your diet or your political views. Entertainment sometimes just needs to entertain. If I watch a movie for 2 hours and forget about how much I hate working on taxes during that time it did it’s job. Can entertainment be more? Well of course it can, and I like it when it is, but it doesn’t HAVE to be more.

All of this is also true of food and other things. Sometimes you may need some moderation in quantities but stop the guilt!

This also means don’t make other people feel guilty for liking what they like. If we all liked the exact same things how boring would that be?

Stop feeling guilty about what you enjoy. Find other people who also enjoy it and don’t feel guilty together!